Normally I would just use SNMP to monitor. I did setup Cacti and running on a Raspberry PI and polling a few nodes. Right away I can see that only interface stats and basic memory/CPU data is available. What I really want to do is monitor SNR (signal levels) Looks like this is not something thats available via SNMP? I also read that SNMP is not apart of the standard build and every time you upgrade you will need to reinstall SNMP. If SNMP is not a good fit to monitor the mesh what are others doing to monitor/alert?
Thanks Bill NG1P
Thanks Bill NG1P
Bill, the project identified snmp as the management protocol of choice several years ago. We couldn't find anyone with skills necessary to develop custom MIBs to capture these AREDN-specific operating parameters. So what you get today are only those common to all router devices. With this less-than effective functionality, it was made optional in our software to increase memory space.
Andre
If SNR and other useful data would be available in sysinfo.json, it would be quite easy to retrieve and use the data on most monitoring software.... I already do it with Zabbix... I use it mainly to store firmware version into the «inventory» feature so it is easy to check what nodes needs to be updated and check the number of active tunnels.
Now if SNR and other useful informations like this are available, it could be easier than SNMP and still working properly...
Bill NG1P, you can definitely use SNMP to monitor AREDN networks, but you need to carefully consider how many nodes you monitor, the number of metrics you collect, and how often you poll the devices. SNMP traffic can put a heavy load on a mesh network, and we need to consider whether the "value" of collecting these metrics is worth the cost. If you do monitor a mesh network, be sure to ask node owners' permission before polling them with your monitoring program.
Here are a couple of previous forum threads that deal with snmp polling:
https://www.arednmesh.org/comment/11385#comment-11385
https://www.arednmesh.org/comment/13802#comment-13802
https://www.arednmesh.org/comment/14057#comment-14057
Hope this helps.